Dr. Joe Wilck: William & Mary’s MSBA

Show Notes

Are you looking for a veteran-friendly school that offers both name recognition and a technically rigorous entry point into data science and machine learning? You should consider the College of William and Mary's Master of Science in Business Analytics program (MSBA)! This program offers the opportunity to become proficient in quantitative data skills while grappling with challenging business problems! As for William and Mary itself, it's one of the eight original "Public Ivies" and stands as the second oldest institution of higher learning in this hemisphere (it's only behind Harvard)! What's more, U.S. News and World Report highly ranks this program for U.S. military veterans! Listen-in to learn more!

FEATURED GUEST:

Name: Dr. Joe Wilck

Email: joe.wilck@mason.wm.edu

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joewilck/

SUPPORT THE DATA CANTEEN (LIKE PBS, WE'RE LISTENER SUPPORTED!):

Donate: https://vetsindatascience.com/support-join

EPISODE LINKS:

William and Mary - Military/Veteran-Friendly (to include application fee waivers!): https://tinyurl.com/49f7jskx

William and Mary - Military and Veterans: https://www.wm.edu/sites/veterans/

William and Mary - Office of Student Veteran Engagement: https://www.wm.edu/offices/osve/index.php

William and Mary's MSBA: https://graduate.mason.wm.edu/msba

William and Mary's Online MSBA: https://online.mason.wm.edu/msba

William and Mary's Online Foundations in Business Analytics Certificate: https://online.mason.wm.edu/msba/business-analytics-certificate

William and Mary's Bachelor of Business Administration (Business Analytics Major): https://tinyurl.com/efzbx6k8

For 2021, U.S. News and World Report Ranks William and Mary #28 in Online Master's in Business Programs for Veterans: https://tinyurl.com/uvshazvw

Story Telling with Data (book): https://tinyurl.com/fbdczrmv

Storytelling with Data: Let's Practice! (book): https://tinyurl.com/s44mryat

PODCAST INFO:

Host: Ted Hallum

Website: https://vetsindatascience.com/thedatacanteen

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-data-canteen/id1551751086

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaNx9aLFRy1h9P22hd8ZPyw

Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-data-canteen

CONTACT THE DATA CANTEEN:

Voicemail: https://www.speakpipe.com/datacanteen

VETERANS IN DATA SCIENCE & MACHINE LEARNING:

Website: https://vetsindatascience.com/

Join the Community on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8989903/

OUTLINE:

00:00:07​ - Introduction

00:01:09 - How William and Mary's MSBA was conceived

00:03:38 - Joe distinguishes data analytics vs. business analytics vs. data science

00:07:04 - Why William and Mary's MSBA is great for veterans

00:14:47 - Joe's background and personal data science journey

00:19:14 - Joe weighs-in on whether or not data scientists need a PhD

00:21:27 - Prerequisite requirements for William and Mary's MSBA

00:24:31 - Joe introduces William and Mary's new Online Foundations in Business Analytics Certificate

00:29:22 - A thorough introduction to William and Mary's MSBA curriculum

00:43:36 - William and Mary's various delivery models for the MSBA

00:45:30 - Cost and GI Bill considerations

00:47:42 - Character traits of successful MSBA students at William and Mary

00:54:03 - Typical career outcomes for William and Mary's MSBA grads

00:55:53 - Background and History about William and Mary

00:58:26 - William and Mary, one of the eight original Public Ivies

01:09:18 - The Raymond A. Mason Business School's Career Services

01:19:37 - Joe on the value of possessing/obtaining a security clearance

01:23:22 - Joe's tips on preparing to enter William and Mary's MSBA

01:25:25 - Other data science-related graduate programs that Joe respects/would recommend to veterans

01:28:55 - Joe's favorite data-related podcast and book

01:29:53 - The best ways to contact Joe

Transcript

DISCLAIMER: This is a direct, machine-generated transcript of the podcast audio and may not be grammatically correct.

Ted Hallum: [00:00:07] Welcome back to episode six of the data canteen, a podcast focused on the care and feeding of data scientists and machine learning engineers who share in the common bond of U.S. Military service.

I'm your host, Ted Hallum.

Today, I'm joined by Dr. Joe Wilck.

Prior to his current role as Faculty Director for Business Analytics Programs at the College of William and Mary, Joe served on faculty at other distinguished institutions like Northwestern University and the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Today, we talk about:

- The caliber and history of William & Mary as an institution,

- Their highly ranked business analytics programs for veterans,

- Who's a good fit and eligibility requirements,

- How you can best prepare for William and Mary's Master of Science in Business Analytics program,

- What Joe and envisions for the future of the MSBA, and

- Most likely outcomes for students at various career levels.

I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Joe, I've been looking forward to this episode for a long time. Welcome to the show. Let's just get straight into it. How did William Mary initially conceive of the MSBA program?

Joe Wilck: [00:01:09] We started looking at an MSBA program before I even started at William and Mary. The, residential MSBA programs had their first classes start in the fall of 2016.

But because of getting a degree program off the ground, hiring new faculty and all that, has to take place. You're looking at maybe three or four years in the making before 2016. So maybe 2013, 2014 at the latest. So the credit really goes to Dr. James Bradley or Jim Bradley. And he teaches one of the courses in the program.

He went to the Dean and he said, look, I need an advisory board. If we're going to have a graduate program in business analytics, I need to know from the industry what we need to teach the students. So, it really started from scratch, working with an advisory board. They were very hands-on with the curriculum at first as an advisory board.

And giving them ideas about what needed to be in the program and also what needed to not be in the program. Because if you ask 10 people, what needs to be in a degree program for business analytics, you're going to get 10 different answers and you're going to get a thousand different topics, but you got to whittle that down.

And so professor Bradley and a number of other folks worked towards that end. Another person that was very instrumental in it was also Julie Hummel. She's one of our student services administrators, and she helped with all the paperwork that had to go to the state to get it approved since we are a public school.

Ted Hallum: [00:02:48] Very cool. So you, mentioned there, the breadth of things that can come up when you're talking about a curriculum for business analytics. I know when I was personally looking for a degree program I came across a lot of programs that range from data analytics, to business analytics, to data science and to somebody who didn't know what they didn't know at the time. A lot of that curriculum looked very similar to me. And even in retrospect, I think of a lot of, it was very similar a lot of it comes down to the application of the course content. So for our listeners, that might be in that position that I was in back in early 2018.

Can you lay out from your expert prerogative, the difference between data analytics, business analytics and data science and kind of what delineates those?

Joe Wilck: [00:03:38] So, I will agree. We haven't made it easy for students. We , tend to cross into each other's hemispheres, if you will.

In fact, one of the things that professor Bradley did when he was designing the program is he went and visited some of these schools. And he not only went to business analytics programs, but he went to, for example, North Carolina State University's analytics program. So, they have an MS in Analytics program, and they were one of the first - I think they might've been the first - program with the word analytics and their name.

Umm also looked at Northwestern's program. Northwestern's program is now a data science program. It used to be, I think, predictive analytics. And then he also looked at MIT's program as well. And it really just depends on what you're focusing on do you want to be very practitioner based?

Do you want to be more theoretical? Or, do you want to also in infuse some of the business aspects as well, such as visualization and communication. And I think that's really where we settled on when we define business analytics for us business analytics at William and Mary is the technical, but it's also the business as well.

 So we try to hit both. If you think about it in a two dimensional space, we try to be pluses in both. And that's really hard to do. But we're, that's what we're aiming to do. Now, in terms of the difference between data analytics versus business analytics versus data science.

To me, data science really should, in my opinion, really should be focused on more of the theoretical and the research aspects of our field. Whereas the business analytics should be focused on solving problems for business and non-profit and the government and then data analytics probably a little bit similar to business analytics, but maybe a little bit more IT focused.

But that's, again my opinion. I'm, just one man.

Ted Hallum: [00:05:39] To you, would it be fair to say that business analytics, in layman's terms, would be applied data science for business applications?

Joe Wilck: [00:05:51] Yes. As long as there's also some technical component as well. I, one of the things that professor Bradley really thought about, and obviously he got some pushback here and he had to get buy-in from the board to get this approved.

Is a lot of people, when they think about business analytics, they want to think strategy. And, Oh, I want to talk about business analytics strategy. But one of the things that we pride ourselves on at William and Mary is our graduates are capable of being doers of analytics. Okay. So they can roll up their sleeves and do some coding.

Now, does that mean they're a computer scientist? No, but they can look at some code and they can tell you what's going on. And so I think that's the important aspect is not just the data science applications, but they also have enough technical know-how that they can contribute to the doing aspect of analytics.

Ted Hallum: [00:06:50] Can you tell us a little bit about how veterans are celebrated at William and Mary and should specifically consider your program? Because I'm always telling our audience that they should go with their celebrated, not whether they're tolerated.

Joe Wilck: [00:07:04] That's, a great one. So William and Mary at the, college level all of our schools we are a yellow ribbon school. We're rated one of the top schools in the country, not just in the business school, but also in the law school and the other schools on campus. For veterans and that's not just at the graduate level, it's also at the undergraduate level.

And we are really just excited about working with veterans. I'm, reading some notes here just to make sure that I don't miss anything. But for example, in 2020, the law school was actually one of the top law schools for veterans. And I was, I'm pretty excited to be partners with them. Our business school is not far behind.

I want to say that our business school program are all at the, graduate level, they're all about 30%, either active duty or veterans. And the college itself, the College of William and Mary through an anonymous donation by a female alumna They were able to start this new center.

And, you can see the website here on the screen. But this is the new Veteran to Executive Center or VET V-E-T. And this center started in 2020, obviously admits the pandemic. But they're doing their best to not only offer opportunities for veterans that are degree programs, but also training and certification so that the veterans can transition to executive positions.

So you can see from that website, they'll have a number of opportunities that will include degree programs, certificate programs, et cetera. And I was consulted a little bit on what should the center offer. And I also mentioned that they should not forget about the dependents and in particular, the spouses who are also looking to transition to a permanent career rather than just transitioning from job to job.

So I'm sure that sensor will grow out as it continues. And it's only a few months old right now. But William and Mary, This is just, again, another example of the school and someone from the community, a big time donor, supporting veterans. And we're really excited about it.

Ted Hallum: [00:09:31] Thanks so much for that information about the new veteran's center there at William and Mary. That sounds fantastic. I've put the link up at the bottom of the screen. If any of our listeners want to go out and look into that further. With that being said, I'd love to know within the business school specifically, how are veterans being engaged?

Joe Wilck: [00:09:48] So again our graduate programs, we have about 30% veterans and that's not just in the online programs, that's also in the residential programs. We actually have some special agreements with all of the different services. And, in some of them it's specifically for the MBA, some of them it's specifically for the MSBA, but it's not uncommon to have veterans from every service in the same classroom, which actually makes for some really entertaining conversation, especially during football season. But with that being said I also want to mention, we have a number of veterans at the undergrad level as well. Especially in business analytics and we're really excited about them.

They come to campus and they're here for either all four years or sometimes they transfer in with associates and they're here for two years. But they, really do make a contribution. And many of them take on leadership roles in our student organizations. And we also have a veterans organization at William and Mary at the undergrad level.

And that's, all majors wide, not just business school. So we're really excited about our veterans. Speaking of veterans our online MSBA we are rated by U.S. News and World Report number 28 for veterans. Now we are rated specifically. Yes, for veterans. Now, the issue though with that rating is that includes programs that are also online accounting programs and online finance programs.

So, if you eliminate the schools that do not have an MSBA, we're actually number 11. We definitely can get better, but I feel like we're, doing our, we're doing our part.

Ted Hallum: [00:11:33] Out of all of the online Masters of Science and Business Analytics programs, when it comes to veterans, your program is ranked number 11?

Joe Wilck: [00:11:43] Yes.

Ted Hallum: [00:11:44] That's fantastic! Wow!

Joe Wilck: [00:11:46] Thank you. Yeah, we're excited! And we're only a we're less than three years old. So...

Ted Hallum: [00:11:54] Another three years, you're gonna be number one for sure!

Joe Wilck: [00:11:56] Maybe now some of the ratings is, not just quality. They also take into account quantity. They look at the size of your program as well.

And William and Mary, we do We do pride ourselves on trying to keep things personal and small. So we probably will never be number one in any category. Some for something like that because we do want to keep the program small enough so that we can know everybody. You know what, I mean by that?

Just keepin' it in the family.

Ted Hallum: [00:12:30] And I think that's what a lot of veterans are looking for, especially if they come out of that culture where they're young, they've been living in the barracks, that can be really good where you come to William and Mary and you find your new tribe quite literally because yeah.

Yeah. And I always tell listeners to this podcast that you need a tribe in order to thrive. And people that come out of the military, usually they had that there in the military and then sometimes they flounder a little bit as they transition to civilian life because they don't have that tribe anymore.

And especially if they're young and they're not married yet, they don't have children. A lot of times a campus culture and being immersed in that can be a really good transition for people as they come from the military life and get back integrated into regular civilian society.

So that's awesome. So you mentioned that Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, which includes a, an emphasis that people can do in business analytics. Then, if they wanted to, they could roll right into the Master of Science and Business Analytics, which you mentioned the online version, but you all, from the information you sent to me, you all have a in residence version of that program as well, correct?

Joe Wilck: [00:13:37] Correct. Yes. So our in residence version is actually older. We're in our fifth year right now. And that program has again 25 to 30% veterans or active duty. We do have a number of active duty folks in the program as well. And that's a one-year program. You start in August, you graduate in may.

Occasionally some folks will come in a little bit early to take some prerequisite work. But usually that's two or three weeks before school starts. So again, you're, it's not like you're still getting it done within a year. And that program tends to be a little bit younger. Folks that are looking for their, either something new in their career or they don't, or some of them are straight out of undergrad and they're working on their masters before they start their career.

Whereas our online program, you're primarily going to get folks that are five to seven years work experience. Although we occasionally get folks with 20 years work experience. In the online program, it's much more variable because most people are working and they're working professionals.

So it makes sense that it's more variable.

Ted Hallum: [00:14:47] Sure. So I'd like to take a second to transition because you bring a wealth of experience here onto the show today for our listeners. And so I'd like to take just a minute. I do this with all of our guests to talk about your personal background, where you're from your interests growing up, whether you were into STEM, not into STEM, loved math, didn't love math and your progression all the way up to your current role, which as we said at the beginning of the show is Faculty Director for the Business Analytics programs there in the business school at William and Mary.

Joe Wilck: [00:15:17] Yeah. So I'm from Farmville, Virginia, and not the Facebook game, it's a legit place. Farmville, Virginia. I spent most of my childhood growing up on a farm, a black Angus cattle farm. My gr my maternal grandparents own and operated the farm. And I grew up with my mom there.

I really excelled in math. That was my thing. I thought I was gonna major in math when I went to Virginia Tech. But the engineering program at Virginia Tech, I guess they'd caught a hold of my application, and they offered me a scholarship if I would major in engineering. And I really loved math and I looked at the, I looked at the curriculum guide and I said, the first year is pretty much the same math classes, whether you're an engineering major or a math major.

So let me just go ahead and take this scholarship and be an engineer. And I think I made the right choice because I really like applying math to solving problems. And I think if I had just studied math, I would have been more pure math. And you don't really get to solve too many problems if you will.

So I, I think I made the right decision there. And then I stayed on at Virginia Tech for my master's degree. But at that time I started doing some work in operations research. So operations research was my area of specialty. In terms of my studies at Virginia Tech and operations research has a significant meaning to me because - and it also has a significant meaning to the military - because the military is actually the industry that has coined that term and has retained that term. So in most all of the military branches, there's an ORSA or an Operations Research job code. And I like to tell people, particularly from military backgrounds, that analytics is like just the new name for Operations Research, because to me the pretty much the same, except now we just have more computational power.

So with operations research background, I started doing some work for our friends in the DC area. Umm, that shall remain nameless and we had some fun there. So I did some work there internships and some short term type projects. And then I decided to go get my PhD and had some choices and options.

But I went to Penn State and I majored in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. And still did some work with our friends in the DC area. But once I went to Penn State, I knew I wanted to go into teaching, and the research track, but I never really expected to be in a business school.

I was always thinking, Oh, I might end up in like a computer science program or a math program or an engineering program. But what has happened over the last say 10 years is analytics and business analytics the businesses and organizations are seeing that it's very important to have this content, even at the undergrad level and especially at the graduate level where folks are applying it.

Okay. So that's why we have a program at William Mary, and they had to start it from scratch because they only had a few faculty members that could teach these courses and they had the bring in new faculty, they had to develop new courses. So I'm really thankful. It was just I lucked out it was like being in the right place at the right time that I'm able to use my skills from operations research and my engineering background, but actually really applying them to business problems rather than doing kind of more theoretical research.

Which again I, love doing that stuff, but I really do find value working with students and helping them solve problems and helping them get jobs and all that fun stuff. So I'm really excited.

Ted Hallum: [00:19:14] Now real quick. And this question, wasn't in the read ahead, but you mentioned, and in your position it's not at all surprising, you mentioned you going, to get your PhD. A lot of people, I think when they think about data science or hardcore analytics, they maybe make an assumption that if they go down that route that they'll have to get a PhD that's like a prerequisite for being a data scientist. Is that a correct perspective or do you think that PhDs are only right in certain cases?

Joe Wilck: [00:19:42] So I think if you would ask me that question 10 years ago, I would've said, yes, you need a PhD. But what we are seeing now in the market is no you don't. So I think the answer in 2021 is you do not need a PhD.

But you do need to have skills and you need to be able to continuously keep your skills up-to-date and whether that means that you need to get a PhD or you just find yourself getting a PhD because you're staying current you never know. But I don't think a PhD is required. I don't think a PhD is necessary and it really would depend on your company and their culture as to how far you can go with, or without one.

If you're working for a, a research think tank or something, then they might see more of a value in having a PhD on the resume. But if you're working for some sort of a consulting firm and you're doing a lot of work for the government, they're not going to care if you have a PhD or not. They're worried about execution and getting the project done.

So there you go.

Ted Hallum: [00:20:51] Very cool. Yeah. As our listeners try to plan and navigate their data science career, that sort of insight is incredibly valuable. So I appreciate you taking the time to answer that question.

So going back to the Master Science and Business Analytics programs that you run, I want to start diving in deeper now and peeling back the onion on those programs.

And that starts for most people, usually with the prerequisites you have to meet the prerequisites first. So most programs have a GMAT or GRE requirement. What's the situation with that at William and Mary, and if it's required, are there situations where it's ever waived?

Joe Wilck: [00:21:27] With the, prerequisites we do waive them and we look at them one by one.

So we have a number of prerequisites for our program, and I do want to make the distinction here that we do have two programs. We have a residential program and we have the online program. So the residential program, if you don't waive out of the prerequisites, then you need to come to the program three weeks early to essentially take a crash course on the prerequisite knowledge before classes start.

So you're coming at the beginning of August, rather than at the end of August to start your coursework. The...the online program, we basically have the prerequisites in an online fashion, and you just basically take a semester of prerequisite coursework before you start the core classes. And all in both cases, you can essentially do the prerequisites a la carte cart.

Okay. So if you need one, but not the other you take one, you don't take this one. And there are ways to waive out of the prerequisites. You might've taken a course in your previous degree program that uses the material. So you will be able to wave out of it from there.

We do have a number of courses that we'd like to see from Coursera or Data Camp that would take the place of the prerequisite. Now, in my personal opinion, it's 2021. The, Data Camp. I think is a little bit better than the Coursera version. And the only reason I say that, this is not an advertisement in any way, but data camp seems to be a little bit more current.

I'm seeing some stuff on Coursera that are still like Python 2, for example. And I w I would prefer to see that Python 3 when I'm looking at their certificates.

Ted Hallum: [00:23:23] So maintain a little bit better.

Joe Wilck: [00:23:25] Oh yeah, definitely. And, it makes sense, cause it's a subscription service on Data Camp.

And that being said, we so again, we do accept those. But, if you're having to choose between one or the other, I would recommend you choose Data Camp just because it's more current. Now, there, there is one caveat to that. We do require some business foundations understanding, so just some basic accounting principles, basic operations principles.

And there's some Coursera courses there that are fine. A balance sheet, not much has changed on a balance sheet in the last 30 years. But we need you to know what a balance sheet is before you start the program.

Ted Hallum: [00:24:11] That makes sense. So if I understood that correctly, if people don't have one of the prerequisites, it's not like they have to go to a community college and they're totally ineligible.

They can take that as part of the MSBA process if they need it. And then if they want to do it informally, then there are options for that too, through like Data Camp, as you mentioned, is that correct?

Joe Wilck: [00:24:31] Correct. And I do want to mention that for the online program - So this is only for the online program - If a, candidate only has to take all of the prerequisites. So there's four of them. There's R, Python, linear algebra, and probability and statistics. Now we just got approved for graduate certificate. So if you take all four of those. Then, and you take one of the courses in the core program, you can get a certificate and then essentially you will, if you're successful, you will be invited to join the degree program.

So that's a program for folks who may not want to fully commit to the degree program, or maybe they're just not quite eligible yet for the degree program. But I'll be honest. And I realize I'm being recorded so I can be honest here, but I think our prerequisites are harder than our regular courses.

And the reason I say that is because it's the first 50 or 100 hours that you learn something that's always the hardest, right? Like you have to struggle, you have to fail fast and then keep, trying. And I feel like that's what our prereqs are our prereq's really bring you up to, to the skill level.

Whether it be in the math or whether it be in the coding. And if you can clear those hurdles of the pre-reqs, then as long as you can maintain that work ethic you're going to be fine in there in the core program.

Ted Hallum: [00:26:02] It probably acts as a bit of a filter too, because as you mentioned, you guys are a ranked program.

So you want to make sure that the people that are proceeding on to the core curriculum are going to be able to do that and do it really well.

Joe Wilck: [00:26:15] And that, that actually brings up another point. And we're going to get to this in a little bit more later, but because we have these prerequisites, we're able to take our core classes further.

Okay. Because everybody comes into the program with the expectation that they have a hundred hours under their belt of Python and a hundred hours under their belt of R, and that they have a working knowledge of probability and statistics and a working knowledge of linear algebra. So I'm not having to explain matrix multiplication.

Yeah. And what that allows us to do is when you get to that second semester of core classes, we're now able to take you, you essentially get to take additional coursework going in extending further. So, I feel like our prerequisites are our secret sauce. Now, is it a high bar? Yes. But if you think about it, because we have a high bar at the prerequisite level, we're able to take our core classes and I'm outside the screen now with my hand, way up here, and that's what we want to do.

Ted Hallum: [00:27:23] I want to go back for just a second to the Business Analytics Certificate Program that you mentioned, just because if I understood the way that works correctly, that affords prospective students, the opportunity where if they apply and the admissions committee maybe isn't persuaded that they would be successful, but they're confident in themselves, they can instead do the business analytics certificate, prove to everyone, Hey, I've got what it takes and then nobody can hold them back at that point, they're automatically eligible to go on into the master's program. Is that right?

Joe Wilck: [00:28:00] Essentially the graduate certificate program, the only prerequisite is that you have an undergraduate degree in any topic.

Okay. And I think you have to write like a, hundred word essay or something. But those are the two things. So you don't have to worry about your GPA. You don't have to take the GRE, you just do the prerequisites and you get the certificate. And typically it's about two thirds of the students who do the certificate will stay on for the degree.

So you're and, then the third that do not persist, typically speaking it's because it's just not the right fit. We're, pretty intense. A lot of coding, a lot of math and they just decide this is not for me. And so we, end the relationship there, but they get their certificate.

Ted Hallum: [00:28:54] But in reality, that's the best possible outcome for both the business school and for that student too, because now they can go and pursue something that is a better fit.

Joe Wilck: [00:29:02] And the certificate originally, when we first started the certificate, it was not financial aid approved, but now it is. So I'm assuming this is a big jump on my part, but I'm assuming that it would be approved for GI bill and all that good stuff, because if it's financial aid approved, very likely it's approved for all of that as well.

Ted Hallum: [00:29:22] So I'd like to go. Now we talked about doing this kinda like layers of an onion. The next one, after someone gets past the prerequisites is  the core curriculum. And I want to talk about that from three particular vantage points. And the first one is essential technical foundations.

So things like data wrangling and storage, creating actionable data, visualizations, coding proficiency, version control, statistical modeling, predictive machine learning and deep learning. I'd love to hear about all that and how those topics are addressed in William and Mary's MSBA program.

Joe Wilck: [00:29:57] As I mentioned with the prerequisites, I feel like we're able to hit the ground running and we're able to get to most of the topics that you described.

In the online program, we have an optimization course. We have two machine learning courses and we have an AI course that's separate from the machine learning courses. Okay. And the residential program it's four credits versus three credits. So in the residential program is three credit hour courses. So we, we have the same topics but they're just packaged a little bit differently and we also have the different numbers of semesters and that sort of thing.

But we are able to hit on all of those. The data wrangling and storage. We have a databases course, but we also talk about big data techniques in both the residential and the online program. And it is progressive in a sense that you take the database course first and then you will eventually will take the big data type techniques course later.

The visualization. This is what's interesting. So we actually hit on this in multiple courses. At least in theory that's our goal. So we, touch on it in a course that we call Competing Through Business Analytics. And so that's typically the first course you take, or the second course you take.

And so Competing Through Business Analytics, it sets the framework for the degree itself, like all the way through and tries to introduce you to, quite frankly, the job and the industry of business analytics. So it touches a little bit on the visualization. You do some coding, you do some business application, you do some presentation.

So you really are doing a little bit of that there. But you're primarily doing this still with kind of native tools, such as Python or Excel, but then we have a database visualization course, or in the residential program we have a separate visualization course, where we focused on Tableau.

Now a lot of folks ask me why do you use Tableau versus power BI. And the, correct answer is because the professor decided to use Tableau, so they get to make the decision. And that's how universities work. But I will say this, and this is true when it comes to any kind of software conversation, the point is do you know one of the softwares really well, so that you can do your job. And if you needed to switch to a new software, could you be trained and still be successful? And so our goal is to teach students to be resilient enough that they could teach themselves something else and still be very proficient in it, but also teach them enough depth in the programs that we decided to teach them in our program.

So for visualization, I feel like we're hitting that one really well.

Coding proficiency. So I'd like to tell students this, and I wish we could put this on our website, but I don't know if we actually have the focus group study to prove it. But, if you count the prerequisites, you're going to spend at least a thousand hours doing R and at least a thousand hours doing Python.

I, know that sounds like a lot, but I think if you ask students who are really successful in our program and you actually ask them like, okay, clock in and clock out over the course of time that you were in the program, you will find that they hit the 2000 hour mark.

And about half their program is an R and about half the program is in Python.

The thing is, it comes back to our advisory board and it comes back to our alumni who come back and tell us how their jobs are going. We had a student that took a job with a company down in Texas. And so now a graduate of course and I was talking to him about what software they were using and all that fun stuff.

And he said that some of the other folks that company brought in from some of our competing programs, he was the only one that knew both R and Python. Like one program was SAS only. One program was R only one program was Python only, but he was a hot commodity because he was basically multi-lingual.

And so I think we're doing the right thing by teaching both. Now, if you come back, if you come back in five or 10 years and we've gone completely to Python, don't get angry. But, I do think that we could eventually go to one language. But for right now, the market is telling us we should do both.

Ted Hallum: [00:34:43] I can also imagine as graduates come out of your program and they're starting to go into interviews, you don't really, it's not comfortable if you're sitting in front of a recruiter and they say this job primarily needs R and you're like, "Oh all I know is Python." At that immediately in that moment, you feel like you're negotiating from a point of being at a disadvantage as opposed to yeah, sure. I've got both of those. I'm ready to go.

Joe Wilck: [00:35:08] The other thing to keep in mind when you talk to academics, and I guess I'm considered one now, we try to be software agnostic because we realize that over the course of our career and over the course of our graduates and students careers, that they're going to have to change. They're going to have to learn how to teach themselves new things.

So, when I was in school, it was Fortran and Java and MATLAB. I never even heard of R and Python until I started doing more, more along this line of work. It's interesting how quickly you need to skill up, but the key, again, I believe is learning something to, to a significant depth, okay? So once you learn, for example, how to do for loops in Python, you'll be able to do it in another language, you just have to get the syntax. But, you got to get the logic up here. And so I feel like we made the right decision to get to a significant level of depth in both R and Python across all these different topics that we're covering, because that's the key, because you could reteach yourself the next programming language that comes down the road.

As long as you understand at depth what's going on.

Ted Hallum: [00:36:33] At that point, it's just trivial to make the transition, because like you said, it's just syntax.

Joe Wilck: [00:36:37] So one of the things that we do in our program is we have two machine learning courses and an AI course, and I believe we're either the only business analytics program that does that, or maybe still one of the few. And I know that's why a lot of veterans and active duty personnel look at our program because the military really wants all of their skills.

When you stack us up side by side against some other programs, you're going to see that in those programs, you might only have two out of those three, or you might not have an optimization course. Okay. But we have all of them. We have two machine learning courses, an AI course, and an optimization course and we cover big data technologies as well.

Ted Hallum: [00:37:21] I think that going back to what you mentioned about the two machine learning courses and optimization course and artificial intelligence course, I think that goes all the way back to the prerequisites that you were talking about earlier and the depth and rigor that your program's afforded to take students in the core curriculum because they come in with that baseline and they're ready to start sprinting from the very beginning.

So you're not limited on the back end with how far you can go. Now I think, did we fully talk about when we were talking about prerequisites since we went back there, did we actually talk about the GMAT and the GRE?

Joe Wilck: [00:37:56] Yeah. So, let me just clarify that. So, the GMAT and the GRE, a lot's happened with regards to that, especially during COVID, but this is actually where there's a discrepancy in our our programs.

So the residential program, the GMAT and the GRE is recommended, but not required in the online program it's required, but then there are waivers and to be quite Frank, most people get a waiver.

There's three ways to get a waiver. There's a math assessment test. Sorry, I'm reading from my notes here. There's a graduate degree in a STEM field and then the third option, and this is the one that most people use to get the waiver, is having a B or better in your last three quant courses in your undergraduate studies and quant courses have to be sophomore level or higher such as calculus or physics.

Now, with COVID-19 the GMAT and GRE are becoming very problematic for students to take. That is something that we're looking into. We certainly don't want to be inaccessible to anyone. And so the math assessment test, or taking some of the prerequisites certainly that could help qualify someone who would otherwise not be qualified.

Ted Hallum: [00:39:22] Now I was going to go back and ask you about the math assessment option to get the waiver for GMA/ GRE, is that a test that they have to go take somewhere? Or, is that something that is offered through the admissions at William and Mary?

Joe Wilck: [00:39:37] It's offered through the admissions. There's essentially, it's like a link. They just send you the link. The test it's, I've had to help grade it, so it's a little, it's a little interesting and curious if you will. But it, has some statistics, it has some linear algebra stuff like that. We're, essentially trying to make sure that you have a pretty good at background, and if you don't, we still have prerequisites that can shore you up on it as well.

Ted Hallum: [00:40:07] For sure. So, I said, I wanted to discuss your curriculum from a few different vantage points. The next vantage point would be from analytics and AI project management and storytelling, because being able to communicate is a huge piece and it almost doesn't matter what job you land in.

You're going to have to take these concepts that are not, they're not the native language for many of the stakeholders you have to talk to, and you're going to have to put them into terms that they can understand. So how does William and Mary prepare their students to do that?

 Joe Wilck: [00:40:39] We do have a number of opportunities for students to hone their skills in storytelling, both individual assignments and group assignments. And we do it throughout the curriculum. So in one of the early courses that students take the Competing Through Business Analytics, I believe every student has to participate in at least two presentations in that course, one individual and one group.

And then there are some other aspects of visualization and/or storytelling spread out through the curriculum. In the courses I teach, for example, primarily I actually have the students do a lot of written communication. So, I might have them write an executive summary, or a memo, because I think that's also important as well.

Oftentimes, you might have to email a decision-maker with just your recommendations, and you're not going to necessarily get a chance to make a presentation or to have that one-on-one conversation. So, you're going to have to get your point across in the written word. There's different ways to going about it from an education standpoint, that those are the key.

And then of course, the culminating experience, the capstone. All of our capstones, and we've been doing this now for the last the last couple of iterations, all of our capstones are with a real client or some sort of a nonprofit. Maybe by a very rare exception will we use a canned project, and the only reason we would use a canned project is if a student was unable to sign an NDA.

Ted Hallum: [00:42:12] So it's a very real experience that capstone project, they have to deal with a real client. They have to solve a real problem. That's fantastic. Now, when they actually present, are they presenting to a combination of faculty and the client, or they present only to the client with faculty observing? How does that part work?

Joe Wilck: [00:42:32] They always will present to the client. Okay. Now the faculty of course, will be there because we're, we have to grade something. But typically when I work with students, now, I'm speaking from my personal experience. Typically when I work with students and they are presenting to a client. It's really a conversation between them and the client. And I am observing, but keep in mind that they probably had gone through one or two practice presentations with me the day before, the week before whenever. And so I have already had plenty of time to give them my recommendations and my commentary.

So I try to be a fly on the wall during their final presentation to the client. But I will swoop in if necessary. Particularly if the client asks something that's completely off base or something like that, but usually I let the students take control and take take the lead on all the conversation.

Ted Hallum: [00:43:36] I think that's a very realistic part of the experience too, because out in industry very rarely would you give a critical presentation without having rehearsed it. At least a few times. It's, it sounds like you guys are keeping it real on every level with that capstone project. That's awesome.

So at this point, I would normally ask you about the delivery model because that's, huge in how successful people are with the program, but we already covered that. Yeah. You guys have both the online program and you have the in residence program and then there's the in residence bachelor's degree program that people can do if they're not ready to do a master's degree program.

And then there's also the, business analytics graduate certificate. So there really is something for everybody in almost every mode of delivery. I think probably the more relevant question at this point would be a lot of people are concerned when I graduate, if I do the online route, will I have the same degree as people that do the in residence program? Or, is it gonna have a giant red online stamp put on it?

Joe Wilck: [00:44:39] So the degree title is the same, whether you're residential or online. And, I already mentioned earlier that the residential program tends to be a little bit younger, less experienced the online program, a little bit older, more experienced.

The online program is asynchronous. That's another kind of key thing to mention. We do not have a weekly you have to be there at Tuesday night at seven o'clock like we don't have that. It's asynchronous, but there are weekly deadlines. And of course, if you're on a team you might have to meet with your team.

And then of course, professors might have office hours or one-on-one meetings with students, but those get scheduled. So the online program is completely asynchronous and the residential program is completely face-to-face unless we're having that once every hundred year pandemic.

Ted Hallum: [00:45:30] Real quick, as we're talking about some of the particulars of the different delivery modes.

And as I think about online, I know it can be a big deal for a lot of our listeners who are using the GI Bill and they want to go to a public school that they're having to look at: is it in the state where I live, because I'm weighing in-state tuition versus out-of-state tuition. And the GI Bill will only pay up to the in-state amount. And so if they really like a school, but that school is not where they happen to live, then maybe they end up having to pay a big portion out of pocket.

How does that work with your online program? Is there in-state and out-of-state tuition rates or is it set up in a way that maybe our listeners could live in Nevada, but do it and the GI Bill will cover all of it. How does that work?

Joe Wilck: [00:46:18] Exactly. Yeah, that's a good question. So our online program is a flat rate, whether you're in state, out of state on the moon, it doesn't matter.

It's the same price for everybody.

Ted Hallum: [00:46:30] And I guess that means the GI Bill would have to pay all of it.

Joe Wilck: [00:46:33] Okay. Yeah. And I think that's by design, to be honest with you, I think they had our military friends in mind when they, designed that kind of a package.

Ted Hallum: [00:46:43] So that really opens up the aperture people don't feel like they have to move to Virginia or work in Virginia to do this online program. Awesome.

I think the next thing I'd like to ask you about is another thing that's critical to student success, and that's the student character traits. People come into this and that's just what they are, they're people. And I read, in some of the information that you sent over that you've taught 4,000 students in your career between undergraduate masters, doctoral level and executive courses.

So you've definitely seen the full spectrum of students who come in to these quantitative programs. And there's going to be one end of that spectrum that just knocks it out of the park. There's going to be another end of the spectrum, maybe they struggle. So I would love to know for our listeners maybe the top three traits of people that generally do exceptionally well and then maybe three traits that don't serve people so well in programs like the MSBA.

Joe Wilck: [00:47:42] All right. I've taught both at public schools, private schools, and I've also taught at the Air Force Academy. So I've seen the full spectrum all the way around and back again. The most important traits to keep in mind is for our graduate program in business analytics.

It does not matter where you come from. It does not matter your undergraduate degree, your race, your gender, et cetera, your culture. I've seen success across the board. It doesn't that none of those traits matter. What matters is, do you have the time? Do you have the effort, and I'll use the word resiliency?

Do you have the, grit or the resiliency? If you will, to keep trying when your code won't debug and you keep trying new things until you get it right. The number one thing that will make or break the success for a student is their ability to code. And a lot of that just comes back to, do you have the time, the effort and the resiliency to just figure it out.

In terms of the the issues that people have with not being ready for the program. I'm going to go off on a little tangent here. I think most of the people that we, that get through our admissions process are fully capable of doing our program. Okay. And the, time, the effort and the grit, veterans all have that. Okay. So the veterans, you guys are ready for our program. We love having you guys in our program.

But what makes our program not a good fit for someone is if they really want to keep it at the strategy level. And so if somebody wants to stay at the strategy level, then they need to really think about an MBA because we are not an MBA. We are a business analytics degree.

I wouldn't say that's a a negative trait. I would just say that's just a different program. It's just not the right fit. We, focused on the coding, the technical skills. We do storytelling, we do business acumen, but if all you want to do is storytelling and business acumen, and you don't want to do any math or programming. This is not the program for you.

And that's okay. We have an MBA that would be perfectly welcoming to you if you want to do the MBA.

Ted Hallum: [00:50:07] I'm so glad you said that because I've run into people, myself who they hear business analytics and maybe they have never looked into it before. And that's, what they think.

They think MBA, they think strategy and, Oh you took one or two quantitative courses, but that couldn't be further from the truth. The MSBA is a very much a STEM quantitative degree through and through. It's nothing like an MBA. So those, types of comparisons are not accurate. For people that do have more of a bent in that direction, I could see where the future of the workplace having the ability to at least be analytically conversant makes a lot of sense.

So I've heard that there are some MBAs out there that allow you to do a specialization in business analytics. I think that's really good considering where everything's going. And again, this is, we keep veering off the read ahead, but I, love for these to be, to become a true conversation. In that spirit, the MBA that you guys have at the business school at William and Mary, does it, can you do an analytics emphasis if you will, in that program?

Joe Wilck: [00:51:23] Yes. Our, so we have multiple MBA programs at William and Mary. We have an online program. We have a full-time residential two year program. We have a residential evening program down in Newport News. And we also have an executive MBA program that's every other weekend, plus a couple of week-long immersions, if you will in the full-time program and in the program in Newport news, so the evening program, there are business analytics, specializations, and I actually teach in both of those as well.

My, I would say that they basically get you maybe 30 to 40%, what we would cover in the MSBA. So, you're getting, and you're getting maybe one course in R beyond the intro, or one course in Python beyond the intro. So I, that's how I see it with those MBA programs and I think other schools are doing the same thing.

Ted Hallum: [00:52:35] So for people who are listening to this episode, they're interested in what they've heard.

If they're more into strategically leading organizations, William and Mary offers the various MBA programs for that. And if they want to be ready for the future, and they want to understand what their data scientists and business analysts are talking about in the boardroom, and they can choose to do that specialization in business analytics which is going to at least make them conversant in those topics.

Yeah, but if they're, more into building artificial neural networks and the classic statistical learning approaches, then the MSBA is a more appropriate degree program. Okay. So if you're listening and you were unclear on that, I'm glad we've been able to to help that make more sense. Yeah.

We've talked about the prerequisites for the program, we've talked about the curriculum in depth and the different ways that it's delivered. The next big thing  that's on people's mind is the whole point of getting a degree. That's the outcome. You want to get these skills and you want to be able to be gainfully employed, putting them to work.

So each school is different they have different geographic pull, they have different industry pull, what are the three geographic areas where students who attend William and Mary most often find themselves employed geographically once they graduate.

Joe Wilck: [00:54:03] Big picture East coast. In terms of our largest alumni base, it will be the DC metropolitan area.

We also have a lot of students that get jobs in the New York city metropolitan area. And then just the greater Virginia region itself. But there is one caveat to that, a number of our students if they're from a particular region maybe even through their own network, they will find employment in their own so we have a number of students who will say from Denver.

And so they went back to Denver and had no problem finding employment in the Denver region. So the good news is, William and Mary's brand, so this goes beyond just the MSBA or the business school, this I'm talking about the College of William and Mary, with Thomas Jefferson and all the presidents that we have that went to school here.

Our brand is deep and it is wide. Now, Virginia though is going to be the largest group because we are a public school and there's going to obviously be a lot more students from Virginia that come here. So clearly they're going to want to stay in state. So there's probably some just bias if you will, towards just staying in Virginia or the DC area.

Ted Hallum: [00:55:17] I have to, before we go to the next question, You mentioned the brand of William, Mary and the presidents that had gone here. And there's some big names in that, but for people who may not be aware, I would love if you would give a quick, if you just quickly summarize how long William and Mary has been around maybe how that stacks up against other schools.

And also as I was going through the information at William Mary, I found some interesting stuff about you guys being a public Ivy and maybe what that is and what distinguishes a public Ivy.

Joe Wilck: [00:55:53] So a William & Mary was founded in 1693. It's the second oldest, 1693. That's pretty incredible. It's the second oldest institution of higher learning in this hemisphere. It is only behind Harvard.

It is the oldest university. But it's still called a college. And the reason I can say that is because we have the oldest law school. And so we had the first graduate program in the country. So we're the oldest university, second oldest college, if you will.

And we've had three presidents that graduated from here, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and John Tyler. And we also claim George Washington because he got a surveyor certificate from William and Mary. He didn't actually graduate from a college.

He was also our first chancellor after the revolutionary war. So we had a number of chancellors before the revolutionary war. But obviously after the revolutionary war, those chancellors no longer applied because they were from the country that we just defeated in the revolutionary war. So, we needed a new one. So we got George Washington to come on down.

Now, in terms of William and Mary's history it's all around us. Think about William and Mary. The last two Wars that were fought on United States soil, William and Mary was invaded essentially in the revolutionary war.

There were people on this campus soldiers, civil war, same thing. And that was still 150 years ago and we're still humming along . So I'm really excited to be a part of William and Mary. If you think about what that means though, it really makes you humble because you're part of a bigger unit than yourself. And you're part of something that has persisted before you and will persist long after your gone. And that's William and Mary. And there's just something special about being part of something that's older than the country.

Ted Hallum: [00:58:16] That's incredible. Thank you for covering that history. I really appreciate that. I learned some things that I didn't even know from going through all the background material. Were you going to say something else?

Joe Wilck: [00:58:26] You mentioned the public ivy. So the Ivy league is there's eight schools in the Ivy league.

I don't remember all of them, but they're all private. Except for, I think part of Cornell is a state school. Like it's ag campus or something, it might be part of the state school, but the rest of that school and then all the other schools in the Ivy league are private. William and Mary fits the mold there.

And William and Mary started as a private school. Cause it has a charter from King William and Queen Mary. That's the name, but and then it was, very religious based and then it was a private school after the revolutionary war. And then in the early 19 hundreds it became a public school because it needed help from the state to stay afloat.

It, also started admitting women. I want to say around 1918, plus or minus a year there. And I think it's the second oldest school in the state of Virginia. That's co-ed. After Virginia State University, which is an historical black college and university down in the Petersburg area. If you think about what that means William and Mary started admitting women 50 years before UVA did.

Okay. So that's a big jump. So William and Mary trying to be more inclusive and, bringing in both men and women to the campus starting in the early 19 hundreds. That's a big history for us. Now, the Public Ivy thing. That's just based on the rigor of our program in general.

So not just the business school, but also the undergraduate, the arts and sciences, the law school, the ed school. We also have a marine science school. So, William and Mary, it's a Public Ivy just because it's known for its rigor and that's been generation after generation.

One of the other cool things about William and Mary is there's at least three schools that used to be part of William and Mary and are now their own independent school, virginia Commonwealth University, Old Dominion University, Christopher Newport University. They all at least have parts, or if not all of their school, came out of a branch of William and Mary.

Ted Hallum: [01:01:02] I had no idea. So you, William and Mary birthed three other universities?

Joe Wilck: [01:01:08] Or, at least parts of them. Okay. Yeah. It's but, that's what happens when you're 300 and some years old, you just... you start something and then it goes off in its own direction. It's definitely something to keep in mind.

It's definitely very humbling to know that this school was here 300 some years before me, and it's going to be here 300 and some years after me. But I'm trying to make the difference that I can today, you know, that sort of thing.

Ted Hallum: [01:01:41] To go back where we left off, but I really I'm, super excited that we got to cover all that context about William & Mary because that's what makes William and Mary something special.

And a special place, I believe for our veteran audience to consider. But we talked about the three main geographic areas where students find themselves after graduating. I'm also interested when you think about, and obviously people graduate from William and Mary and they go on to work for hundreds, if not thousands of employers, but I'm sure there are some main employers that heavily recruit from William and Mary.

So when you think about the top three where is it most likely that a graduate from William Mary would find themselves in terms of employer?

Joe Wilck: [01:02:30] Okay. So I gotta be careful, gotta be diplomatic because we have plenty of very willing hiring partners that hire our graduates. So, I want an in three industries and then dive into them specifically. Is that okay? Sure, Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So the three industries that we typically see our students go into are consulting, financial services (which I would also include insurance as part of financial services), and then just technology.

So like the tech companies. I also need to mention that about a third of our students go to work for a small business or medium sized business and some of them even start their own business. Okay. So that's very important. And then the other thing to mention is about 10 to 20% of our graduates choose to go to work for a government agency, and we're very excited to support them in that regard.

But with that being said, the consulting firms. So it's the big names. So you have your EYs, Deloitte, Booz Allen, Accenture, PWC. I'm reading the list here. CGI, Grant Thorton, Cap Tech, Marathon. The list goes on and on. In the financial services Bank of America, Capital One, American Express, Morgan Stanley, TIAA, Vanguard.

Just making sure I didn't miss any Geico, Anthem. And then in the tech space, we have a number of students who everybody's favorite company these days, Amazon, we have a number of students that have gone on the Amazon and a couple that have gone out to some of the FANG companies out West. But I also just, again, want to mention that a large number of our students, not obviously the majority, but a third of our students do go to those small businesses or small boutique consulting firms or go to work for in a different industry.

So we are seeing some more students going into manufacturing, which I'm really excited about because I've done some research in manufacturing. So I'm pretty excited to see some of our students go that route. So Altria, for example, they're out in Richmond. We also see some folks going out to Honeywell which is also in our backyard as well.

I'd love to see more students go into work down in the Norfolk Newport News area for the shipyards. And I'm hoping that we will start seeing more of that as we continue to grow. So, long story short the, nice thing about this program, and this is true for a veteran audience as well, is we see companies across all industries and then we're seeing our students get jobs and all the different verticals

I just did an information session last week with a graduate from the online program and a graduate from the residential program who both went to work for Publix as data analysts and they're down in Florida, no state income tax.

Ted Hallum: [01:05:43] So it's the opposite of being pigeonholed. Oh, your that's what you're seeing for people that graduate from this program is the options open to them once they graduate, it's wide open.

Joe Wilck: [01:05:55] And, honestly it's not, even just graduate it's before they graduate. And this just as well as in your, I'm gonna brag about you are in our, especially in an online program because all of those students are working. While they're in the program, almost everybody gets either promoted or gets some sort of new role whether within their current, in their current company or another company or organization while they are in the program, which is amazing to me.

And in fact, we actually saw that in the residential program, which makes it a little complicated because then the person leaves the program. But we had a student this past year get a job in between the semesters. That student is now going to transfer to our online program.

Ted Hallum: [01:06:48] I'm glad that came up. So that's the it's possible if somebody needs to do that.

Joe Wilck: [01:06:52] Yeah I, would prefer it not to be the... it's possible, but let's, not go overboard. Okay.

Ted Hallum: [01:06:59] The conversions are probably complicated.

Joe Wilck: [01:07:02] It we can do it. But it's not a one for one. Because again the, residential program three credit hour courses, you're you end up taking four classes at the same time.

Whereas in the online program, you're taking one course at a time, two courses a semester, and it's four credits each. So it's not a one-to-one conversion. So there ends up having to be some extra work for at least one faculty member. And they're looking at him to get that going.

But I'm, just excited. Our students are able to get jobs that they really care about. We have a number of students who are very passionate about working for the government. Whether in public policy or whether working for one of our friends in the DC area. Especially if you have security clearances and all that fun stuff. We also have some students that are very passionate about working for nonprofits. In the last year we've placed three or four students where they're working for the state government's department of education or housing or something like that.

And just hearing some of the fun stuff that they get to do with data and analytics, but also how they're able to help people within their state. They're, they I, feel like my job is to help change people's lives. And so that they can go on to great careers and raise a family, but then to hear about all the cool stuff they're doing is Oh my gosh, that's so amazing.

We, we, do have some students that they really want to work for consulting, but they don't want to work for one of the big name consulting firms.

They want to work for like a boutique consulting firm. And perhaps live in a different city than say DC or New York. They want to live in a smaller city or down South somewhere. And they're having no problem finding something either. So it's, you don't have to feel pigeonholed into going to DC or to New York.

We're, able to place students all over. If you want to go out to Denver, we got connections.

Ted Hallum: [01:09:18] Now real quick, you said you've got connections. We, you can help place students. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about the apparatus that William and Mary has to help with that once their education's complete?

Because from what I I understand, I think there's a whole part of the business school that helps with trying to help pair up a good match between the graduating student and the industry partners.

Joe Wilck: [01:09:44] So our residential students, they interact with the career services a lot more during their time as a student, because they're just naturally walking right by the office on their way to class, our online students, we have to do a matchmaking service.

But also keep in mind, and this goes back to something we talked about earlier that new veteran's center, that's going to be a big proponent for our veteran students. Because that's the whole purpose it's veteran to executive. So they're going to also be a big proponent of that as well.

But our business school is unique. We have what's a group of folks known as our executive partners and these are volunteers. They were all C-suite level folks that have retired to the greater Williamsburg area. For those of you who don't know, Williamsburg is a retirement hub. We have three gated communities and plenty of golf courses and fairly mild weather for Virginia.

And all of these folks are looking to give back, but they don't want to drive all the way to DC or to Richmond to do it. They, can drive up to our building or hop on zoom and help our students either with resumes or coaching them, interview prep all of that sort of thing. So we have a number of ways to put you essentially give you a coach.

To help you along your way. But in order for that to be very useful, you have to know what you want. Because again, these coaches, if you will, these executive partners, they come from different industries, they come from different backgrounds. So we want to make sure we give you someone or assign someone to you that can really set you up for success.

So if you want to work in manufacturing, we have some manufacturing people. If you want to work in marketing, we've got some marketing people and so forth and so on.

Ted Hallum: [01:11:41] So they relate to their, I would say a mentee, if you will in terms of where they are and where they want to go.

Joe Wilck: [01:11:48] Exactly. Exactly.

Ted Hallum: [01:11:50] Very cool. Now, a second ago you mentioned an unconventional. Situation where a student was midway through the residence program and they had an early arriving, positive out career outcome. And they had to transition to the online program to finish up.

Also, because these things, I assume they come up fairly routinely, let's say you have someone in either program, the in residence or the online, and it's partially or entirely being paid for by a employer's tuition reimbursement program. And maybe that tuition reimbursement benefit doesn't keep pace with the the program. Do they have to stay with their cohort or can they take a few classes and then take some time off until their tuition reimbursement benefit recharges at the end of the benefits year and then continue on.

Joe Wilck: [01:12:43] So in the online program, yes. That there's, within reason you can't take 10 years to do the program, but I think you have maybe two and a half years. Okay. To, do the program. Once you start the core classes. So after the pre-recs you have two and a half years. So you can essentially, you would need to take you would need to take a class like every other semester or something.

Now the residential is a little bit different. That program, you really do need to be here for the entire semester because it's a cohort based program. For the entire semester, so for the entire fall or for the entire spring. And, the reason for that is we, essentially have teams that are across all the courses, so you're in the same team for all your courses.

And so that could cause a problem. If...

Ted Hallum: [01:13:41] You're team could be in a bit of lurch if you...

Joe Wilck: [01:13:44] Right, and And the other thing, too and this is getting a little bit into the weeds, but for the residential program, it's not actually billed at a credit hour, it's billed as a program. So there's just like one lump sum.

Ted Hallum: [01:13:58] So earlier I asked you to think about the top three geographic regions where people can go after they graduate. And then I asked you about employers and we'll just say top three industries. So now I'm going to give you a scenario. Let's assume that there's a graduating MSBA student.

And they get hired in the main area. The number one out of all the places where graduates typically go and they're hired in the primary industry, out of all the industries that hire MSBA graduates. With that scenario, let's say you've got three students:

One, no career experience. So they went through the residential program right after they did their bachelor's degree and they're going to get their very first job.

Second person, early career experience. So there's somewhere in like the one to six year range.

Third individual mid to late career.

 What are typical salary expectations that each of these individuals should have given where they are in their professional standing?

Joe Wilck: [01:15:02] All right. So the, first category is so no experience, so and no kind of security clearance or anything. Coming out of our program, you're looking at probably $ 70,000 annual.

Ted Hallum: [01:15:14] It's not bad at all for somebody that has never stepped foot inside the doors of an employer, like you said, no security clearance, $70,000 out of the gate. That's fantastic.

Joe Wilck: [01:15:25] Yeah. You're already middle-class like at 23 years old.

The, second category, I'm going to reframe it a little bit and say one to five years, because we actually report this number. Sure. To our ranking services and this number is now, I'm going to give you the interquartile range, if you will. It's $75k to $90k.

Okay. So we do have some folks that go above 90, but typically you're looking between $75 and $90k, one to five years work experience. And then getting the MSBA.

Now the, folks with more than five years, it's just so variable. We're looking at $90,000 and then I, asked my, I actually went down to the career services folks and asked them for a number.

And they were like, "you can say $125k, but is it $200k+ plus?" And but, it just really depends on in that respect what kind of experience do you have and where are you going to live? Because let's be honest, $70,000 or $100,000 or whatever the number is in DC is very different than $70,000 or a $100,000 in St. Louis. So I, do want to caution everyone when I get, when I give these numbers that. You do have to keep in mind location because one of our hiring partners, and they're from St. Louis, they actually show when they come to my class, my residential class and do an info session. A couple of years ago they showed a slide and they showed a $1 million condo in DC and it's 1500 square feet.

And then they showed their $200,000 house in St. Louis with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, two acres fenced in yard. And it's like, why would you want to live here versus?

Ted Hallum: [01:17:39] That's different universes for, in terms of cost of living. For sure.

Joe Wilck: [01:17:42] So I, think you got to keep that in mind when I'm giving you those numbers, because obviously if you're going to live in DC, then there's, there needs to be a salary bump to live in DC or New York or whatever.

Ted Hallum: [01:17:54] For the, for people who are listening and as you said you have to keep in mind how far it will take you when you graduate. But it sounds like if you're mid to late career, six figures is definitely not out of reach. If that's, been something that you've been aiming for during your career.

And then there you could be one of those outliers where you you really could shoot for the stars because you mentioned one one extreme case where somebody made over $200,000.

Joe Wilck: [01:18:22] The other thing you need to think about too is and this is going to definitely be true for a lot of your listeners who might have a security clearance, they're gonna, they're gonna get hired, and they might make low six figures. Okay. But a lot of our graduates too, and we're seeing this from both the residential and the online, they start moving up the ladder quick. Okay. And I don't know. I don't know. I don't really think it's us. I think it's, just the kind of student that we attract they just have that work ethic and they are able to produce results.

And so you also have to keep in mind, like it's not only the salary that you're going to get after you graduate, but you're going to set yourself up for a really positive slope, if you will, moving up the salary ladder - if that's what you want. If you want additional responsibility, if you want to go into the management or executive level, we're going to set you up on that path.

If you want it, or if you want to stay in your level, that's fine too. So keep that in mind as well. It's not just, you're out the door salary. It's the five years from now salary, too.

Ted Hallum: [01:19:37] So people, come out of the shoot with some momentum and  it's like a choose your own adventure book. As far as once you graduate, where you want to end up, what strata management or w what level of an individual contributor you want to be.

Now you mentioned security clearances, and there is a slice of our audience who definitely got a security clearance while they were in the military.

And they've maintained that as they transitioned to the civilian world. A couple of things, I'd love to know how much of an effect do you think the, or that you've observed that to have on people as they look for career placement, and then also If you would weigh in on how critical you think it is that people try to maintain that because I know a lot of people get out of the military. Maybe they spent four years cooped up in a SCIF which stands for secret compartmentalized information facility, they couldn't have their phone, they didn't have access to technology.

And one of their main goals as they go to civilian world is I don't want to work in a SCIF anymore. I want to have windows. I want to be able to see the trees and the sky from where I work. And I get that I can totally, that resonates with me. I empathize. But at the same time, we've talked in previous episodes of the show about how getting your first job is the hardest job to get.

And I think a lot of times having that clearance can make that first hurdle a lot easier. And so I'd love to get your thoughts on that too.

Joe Wilck: [01:21:02] Yeah. I would highly recommend to try to maintain that security clearance if possible. That's not to say that you can't get it once, once, it expires.

But it does help. And. I have people ask me for resumes of people who have security clearances on a weekly basis. And the problem is, I'm not legally allowed to just send them a booklet of resumes where I have filtered out the people who have security, clearances. Okay.

Ted Hallum: [01:21:36] For obvious reasons. We appreciate you not doing that.

Joe Wilck: [01:21:39] But, with that being said, the folks that have these skills from the MSBA with the security clearance, you're starting to filter down so that the numbers are so low that you're now not just looking at one job offer, you're looking at multiple job offers, or you get to maybe be selective about where you want to live, or those types of things.

You're going to have your options. And so my advice would be, if you can maintain your security clearance or try to graduate and still have the security clearance, at least a couple of years left on it or something, that will help you because it will open more doors. And, so like your previous the previous people that you've interviewed have said, the first job is always the hardest and you also want to keep as many doors open as possible.

Ted Hallum: [01:22:38] Sure, Now thank you for that perspective. It sounds like there's definitely a distinct demand signal for people who still have that clearance.

So the next thing maybe people are listening to this episode and they say. All right sold, William and Mary's MSBA program is the program for me. Where do I sign? For those people, if they're prudent, they'll want to come into the program, even if they're going to do all the prerequisites, they'll want to come in to those prerequisites as best prepared as they can. What do you recommend as the best avenue of approach for self prep? You mentioned Data Camp earlier.

So I assume you're a fan of that. Is there anything else or are there specific there's so many offerings at Data Camp? Were there specific things you'd recommend there?

Joe Wilck: [01:23:22] So Data Camp is my that's short and simple Data Camp. There's basically a sequence that we would recommend to you. And also I want to keep in mind that a number of our faculty, myself included, once you get into our course, we actually work with Data Camp so that we can get you a free semester access to Data Camp.

I think it's still an academic license, so it doesn't open all the doors, but it opens a lot of them, at least for the Python and R stuff that we're doing. So keep that in mind as well that you might get some free access from your faculty.

Ted Hallum: [01:24:00] Very cool. That's fantastic. So as far as the specific tracks that you all recommend, is that something that students could just ask the admissions counselor that they get paired up with? About exactly which ones they should try to do.

Joe Wilck: [01:24:12] So if you ask them today on February 27th, 2021, they wouldn't have an answer for you, but I have compiled that list and I am trying to. Distribute that information as globally as possible, but we're hoping to get it on our website.

The reason I don't want to just start naming courses is because they are going to be continuously upgrading their content as well.  Essentially, they have an, R onboarding sequence and a Python or onboarding sequence. So those are the, essentially the two you want to start and go forward with.

Ted Hallum: [01:24:42] All right. I'll ask you just a few more questions to close out. The first one is we here at the Data Canteen.

We want to make the broadest array of awesome options available to veterans. So whether that's education options, career options whatever, obviously a excellent option are the programs offered at William and Mary. But for whatever reason, that may not be a perfect fit for every listener of the show.

So I'd love to know what, is another quantitative program out there, whether it's analytics, business analytics, data science that you respect, and that you'd be willing to recommend as a solid option for people, if the MSBA is not the best option for them.

Joe Wilck: [01:25:25] Okay. So it's hard for me cause I'm, I had to stay on brand.

Okay. I'm pointing it out my shirt. So William & Mary is obviously first and foremost, the option, I think because we have a global reach, a lot of folks know about us, and we have folks that get jobs in a variety of industries. But that being said, I'm going to punt the question and then I'll come back and answer it.

If you have a particular part of the country you want to live in, then you re you should really look at programs in that part of the country. And I say that because there's always going to be some local alumni who are going to be willing to interview you or to have coffee with you and help network with you in that particular location.

So for example, if you wanted to live in Seattle, then going to the University of Washington would be a great choice. If you want to live in LA, then go into USC would be a great choice. Those types of things. So I do want to just mention that you do, if there's a particular part of the country, you desperately want to live in, then look at schools in that location, but keep in mind some of the earlier things I said. Make sure that this just wasn't a rebranded program or MBA with a few extra courses on it and analytics. You still want the technical know-how that comes from it.

I've already mentioned NC State's Masters of Analytics program. I've already mentioned MIT's program. But the program that I have my eye on is in my backyard, it's in your backyard to Ted, it's UVA's new data science school.

They have, I think it's like $170 million endowment for that new school of data science. And I anticipate that school is really going to focus on like driving the research with data science. So whether it's in medicine or whether it's in other applications, finance, et cetera, of applying data science.

But I think that is something to keep in mind. So if you really want to go a research route with your graduate program you, might want to look at a UVA. So again, that will be more data science and not business analytics.

Another school that's gotten a large endowment to play in this space is MIT. They're starting a new school of AI. So again, if that's where you want to go, and if you really want to do AI, but you want to do more research rather than applications. So those are two schools I have my eyes on. And, I'm really excited to see what they're able to do and make, humanity better if you will.

Ted Hallum: [01:28:11] Sure. I know it's a tough question to ask you to recommend another program, but I really appreciate your candor because that does open up other options for people to go and look at and compare and contrast. And like you said, whatever their goals are. If they're wanting to go the theoretical route and continue on with a PhD, then a program that's heavier in those theoretical disciplines, we would make sense.

And I'm so glad what you mentioned about alumni network footprints and making sure that overlaps with where you want to be because having a network is huge. So oftentimes it's, it is what you know, but it's also who that can be a big benefit.

The next question, as we wrap up is your favorite data related podcast or book.

Joe Wilck: [01:28:55] So staying on topic, you have my favorite data related podcast. I'm, excited about this podcast. I'm excited to see where you're going to take it, and I really appreciate what you're doing for your fellow veterans.

That being said my favorite book, so you'll, remember this one.

So Cole Knaflic she has, we had her book. Storytelling with data. And I really liked this book because she brought to light some things, but I don't know if you know this. She has another book out that came out in 2020 a practice book. So this came out last year, unfortunate timing with the pandemic.

But these, this is basically case studies. And so this came out last year. I'm really excited for her and what she's doing. Being able to storytell with data. Now, I don't get to teach the visualization course, but if I did, these books would be my go-to books.

Ted Hallum: [01:29:53] So the final question is, we've whet everybody's appetite, I think they're going to be people who listen to this episode and it's going to seal the deal for them. They're going to want to come get into the technical rigor that you've got going on that William Mary's MSBA, what are your preferred means of contact?

We've got your LinkedIn username here on the screen. It's been right there beneath you the whole time, but is there any other way that you're okay with people reaching out, touching base with you comparing notes, whatever the case may be.

Joe Wilck: [01:30:23] LinkedIn or email is fine. Those are my preferred methods of contact.

LinkedIn, you can probably expect a response within one day. Email, the only tricky thing with email is obviously it could get filtered. But either way is fine. Usually again, within 24 hours, I respond. So, I'm looking forward to this, by the way, I'm looking forward to meeting some new folks and, seeing what who's in your audience and what questions they have.

Ted Hallum: [01:30:55] I know because I was once a person who was clueless, needed help, I've mentioned in this podcast before I reached out to you and you were a tremendous help and became a mentor to me. So I know that you're open to that, and I love the thought of the help that you'll be able to provide people who do take you up on that offer.

Joe Wilck: [01:31:12] Now, did you ever, did you tell anybody exactly how we came about to meet meeting isn't that remember this. From my perspective and correct me if I'm wrong, but you reached out to me because you were applying to a different program and you wanted me to go over your essay and your application. And we just had a couple of rounds back and forth on LinkedIn or email. And then we had a phone call I think, and I convinced you to at least apply to our program just to see how it shook out and like they say, the rest is history.

If I can have some parting words here, that would be how I feel about our, not just the business analytics program at William and Mary, because that's my vision of the program is to keep it to where I can have an individual touch with all the students and get to know them, but the greater community of analytics - especially with veterans - you help each other out.

And we're seeing folks from all different verticals and horizontals, different industries, different education backgrounds coming through this field because they're seeing how important data is to their industry or to their vertical or to their business. And it seems to be a very open community. It's, not a surprise that we are using open-source code to teach our courses.

Half of our courses use open-source textbooks. So you're not you're saving on those textbook costs. I think that's the culture that not only this program has, but I like to say that our industry itself has, we're a very open kind of helping each other out. Even in pandemic times, we're finding ways to help each other out.

And, I think that's the beauty of your podcast here. You're helping, you're passing it along. You're helping people out now yourself. That's great.

Ted Hallum: [01:33:17] I'm really glad you brought that up because another topic that we've covered before and we'll cover probably in almost every episode, at least a little bit is the phenomenon of imposter syndrome because people, they start diving into these technical topics, or they just hear the phrase data scientist, and they think I could never do that.

They're on the outside trying to picture what the industry would be like. And they think the people who do that wouldn't want me, I'm not good enough for that. Or I'm not smart enough for that. And all the things that I thought of when. I was looking at William and Mary's website and that's all public Ivy and it's been around since the 1600s but that's so not true.

As you said, it's an open community, it's an open industry. We even had a previous guest on this show who said, it's almost gotten to the point where every company is an analytics company. They just don't all know it yet. This is really the industry for everyone. And if you come on board now, you're just you get the early mover advantage.

Joe Wilck: [01:34:17] Oh, definitely. Definitely. And, I truly think that the more data science, the more analytics that we have No, we're going to be able to solve problems that will really change the world.

I have a book on my shelf over here that talks about some of the major problems that we're going to see in the next hundred years like feeding 10 billion people, and climate change, and a pandemic and all this other fun stuff that we're living through. And I think data science is going to be at the heart of it though. I think, we, when I say we I'm talking about our folks with our skills, we're going to be, we're going to be a part of those solutions. And we need it. You have young kids. I have young kids. I wanna, I want to see them have a good life too.

Ted Hallum: [01:35:08] The future is bright, and we get to be a part of it. And I can't think of a better way to end than that! Thank you so much for coming on the show, the information that you've been willing to share both about William and Mary's programs and just about the analytics industry in general has been phenomenal.

We really appreciate it. Thank you so much!

Joe Wilck: [01:35:27] All right. Thanks Ted!

Ted Hallum: [01:35:28] Thank you for joining me on this episode with Dr. Joe Wilck. As always, until the next episode, I bid you clean data, low P-values and Godspeed on your data journey.